Sweeping Zen » Ezra Baydahttp://sweepingzen.com
The Who's Who of Zen BuddhismSat, 21 Mar 2015 14:49:49 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Saying Yes to Fearhttp://sweepingzen.com/saying-yes-to-fear/
http://sweepingzen.com/saying-yes-to-fear/#commentsSun, 19 Jan 2014 12:27:18 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=94591Ever since I began teaching I’ve regularly returned to the subject of fear. Why? Because fear is what drives much of our behavior, and at the same time it is the one thing that we least want to feel. I remember when I first started my spiritual journey I had the strong expectation that practice ...

]]>Ever since I began teaching I’ve regularly returned to the subject of fear. Why? Because fear is what drives much of our behavior, and at the same time it is the one thing that we least want to feel. I remember when I first started my spiritual journey I had the strong expectation that practice would free me from anxiety and fear. I thought that if I studied and meditated, and struggled to change my behaviors, I could replace the undesirable parts of myself with a new, improved version of me—one that was free of anxiety.

So from the very beginning of my practice I decided to confront my fears directly whenever they arose, thereby hoping to amputate them. For example, I’d wear clothes that didn’t look good to confront my fear of disapproval. Or I’d force myself to speak publicly even though I had a strong fear of public humiliation.

After doing these tasks it got increasingly easier, and I actually thought I had overcome my fear. But in truth, it was like cutting off a weed; the fear was temporarily removed, but because I had not gone to the root, it eventually returned. These examples illustrate two of the classic misconceptions about dealing with anxiety and fear. The first is seeing fear as the enemy, a flaw, a weakness, within myself that I have to conquer. The second is believing that if I confront my fears and go against them, they’ll go away permanently.

It’s understandable that we would hold onto these misconceptions, because we have so much aversion to feeling the discomfort of fear, and we’ll do almost anything to avoid it and get rid of it. Yet, it’s also a fact that whenever we don’t address our fear, we make it more solid, and consequently, our life becomes smaller, more limited, more contracted. In a way, every time we give in to fear, we cease to live genuinely.

But there’s an alternative way to live—one that is no longer driven by fear. In fact, the essence of living authentically starts when we learn to relate to our fears in a new way. Instead of seeing fear as our enemy, we can begin to see fear as a wake-up, a signal. This makes each occurrence of fear an opportunity to see exactly where we’re stuck, where we’re holding ourselves back, where we can open to life. What we have to understand is that fear is the protective cocoon of ego telling us to stop. It tells us to not go beyond the outer edge of our cocoon. But the direction of our path is to move directly toward our fears, for only in this way can we go beyond fear’s cocoon. While we may not like it, fear can be our best indicator that we’re going in the right direction. In fact, whatever we can’t say Yes to is the exact direction of our path.

What does it actually mean to say Yes to our fear? It means we’re willing to open to it and embrace it as our path to freedom. Saying Yes doesn’t mean we like it—it simply means we’re willing to feel what it really is. Saying Yes to fear is the opposite of what we usually do, which is to run away from it. Yet, when we stop resisting what is, and over time develop the genuine curiosity to know what’s really going on, it’s possible to begin to see our experience of fear almost as an adventure instead of as a nightmare.

To know what fear really is, whenever it arises we ask the question, “What is this?” We’re not asking why we have it or analyzing it—we’re essentially asking, “What is this moment?” To answer, we simply have to look at two things: the fearful thoughts, and the physical sensations of fear. The practice is to pause, allow ourselves to observe the thoughts racing through the mind, and then feel the physical sensations throughout the body.

When we say Yes to fear, even though we may feel terror, we can begin to see there is no real physical danger. We no longer need to panic, or try to push it away. As we let it in, we’re giving up our fear of fear. We may think we can’t stand to feel it, but the truth is we just don’t want to. Saying Yes to fear is the countermeasure to this resistance; it’s the courage to willingly stay present with it.

A few weeks ago I received a call from my doctor telling me there were signs of a cancerous tumor in my kidney. After my initial shock, I thought of how many times I’ve said that we’re all just one doctor’s visit away from falling through the thin ice. And fall I did—right into the icy water! But fairly quickly I remembered to say Yes to the arising fears, even while my mind tried to weave the dark and grim story of “Me and My Cancer,”—with the corresponding closing down in the body.

Saying Yes has allowed me to turn away from the story of doom, and instead turn toward the understanding that regardless of what might happen, this will be my path to living truly authentically. In a way, I actually look forward to being pushed to work with my deepest attachments—to comfort, to control, to my body, to my future. Saying Yes means that my aspiration to live my life authentically is more important than indulging the story of doom and fear. Remarkably, the episode of falling through the thin ice was very short. It isn’t that all the fear is gone; in truth, there is still anxiety about what will happen. But it doesn’t predominate, and I’m able to see it and relate to it as simply a conditioned response to perceived danger.

I mentioned that in my early years in practice I had the expectation that practice could free me of fear altogether. Now, many years later, it’s clear to me that spiritual practice is not so much about being totally free from anxiety and fear as it is about not having to be free from them. There is a subtle but crucial difference between these two understandings. We no longer see ourselves as flawed or weak because we have fear—we’re able to see it as simply our all-too-human conditioning. We begin to realize that even our most unwanted emotions are simply part of the human condition; and moreover, that they don’t have to dominate us. The more deeply we understand what it means to say Yes, the less we feel the need to push away fear when it arises. Instead, we can see it and use it as a catalyst on our path. When we’re willing to experience our life—whatever it is—and not hide in safety and complacency, this is the essence of living most genuinely.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/saying-yes-to-fear/feed/0Ezra Bayda Audio Libraryhttp://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-audio-library/
http://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-audio-library/#commentsWed, 08 Jan 2014 19:21:48 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=91031Ezra Bayda (born 1944) is a member of the White Plum Asanga and has been practicing meditation since 1970. He originally trained in the Gurdjieff tradition, living in a community led by Robert De Ropp. He began formal Zen practice in 1978, studying first with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and then later with Jakusho Kwong Roshi. In 1992 he began working with Charlotte ...

]]>Ezra Bayda (born 1944) is a member of the White Plum Asanga and has been practicing meditation since 1970. He originally trained in the Gurdjieff tradition, living in a community led by Robert De Ropp. He began formal Zen practice in 1978, studying first with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and then later with Jakusho Kwong Roshi. In 1992 he began working with Charlotte Joko Beck, and began teaching in 1995, receiving dharma transmission in 1998.

His teachings are a blend of the Zen and Gurdjieff traditions, and are also influenced by Stephen Levine and Pema Chodron, with their emphasis on the need for loving kindness as an essential part of practice. He has been a hospice volunteer for over ten years, and has authored five books, including Being Zen and Zen Heart.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-audio-library/feed/0Groundhog Dayhttp://sweepingzen.com/groundhog-day/
http://sweepingzen.com/groundhog-day/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:09 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=42349In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character wakes up every morning in the same exact place, at the same exact time, always having to repeat the same day—in this case, Groundhog Day. No matter what he experiences, he still wakes up having to repeat the day. No matter what he does, he can’t get ...

]]>In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character wakes up every morning in the same exact place, at the same exact time, always having to repeat the same day—in this case, Groundhog Day. No matter what he experiences, he still wakes up having to repeat the day. No matter what he does, he can’t get what he wants, which in this case is the pleasure of sexual conquest. Although he tries all of the classic strategies of escape, nothing works; he still wakes up the next day to the same mess.

In the meantime, another part of him is growing. He starts moving from just trying to fulfill his own desires to doing things for other people. For example, every day he saves the same child from falling out of the same tree at the same time. He even starts using his once ego-driven accomplishments, such as playing the piano, to entertain others, not just to serve himself. Finally, not through purposeful effort or even awareness, he becomes more and more life-centered, less and less self-centered. And in typical Hollywood fashion, he gets what he wants—in this case, the girl. In the end, his repeating pattern is dissolved.

One of the themes of practice is that we gradually move from a self-centered life to a more life-centered one. But what about our efforts to become more life-centered—doing good deeds, serving others, dedicating our efforts to admittedly good causes? There’s nothing wrong with making these efforts, but they won’t necessarily lead us to a less self-oriented life. Why? Because we can do these things without really dealing with our “self.” Often our efforts, even for a good cause, are in pursuit of a life based mainly on our desire for some form of comfort, security, or appreciation. Such efforts are still self-centered, because we’re trying to make life conform to our pictures of how it ought to be. It’s only through seeing through this self—the self that creates and sustains our repeating patterns—that we can move toward a more life-centered way of living.

Often our natural impulse to do good deeds is confused with other motives. This is not surprising, considering how often we’re given the message, especially in our early years, that to do good means we are good, In being told we’re good when we’re helpful, we receive the praise we crave. Yet once we confuse helpful behavior with our own needs, we’re locked into a pattern that undermines our genuine desire to do good.

When I was six years old I lived in an apartment house on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. My father owned a retail store about two miles down the boardwalk. During the tourist season he would work fourteen hours a day. Since he couldn’t come home for supper, every night my mother would make him a hot meal and put it in a brown paper bag. My job was to carry this bag in the basket of my tricycle and deliver it to my father while it was still hot. I can still see myself—a very earnest little boy single-mindedly speeding down the boardwalk on my tricycle so that my father could have a hot supper. There’s no doubt that I felt a natural desire to do good, but somewhere along the line, perhaps from repeatedly being praised as a “good boy,” my natural desire to do good became enmeshed with getting my father’s approval and love.

We all have our own version of this syndrome because when we’re children, we’re naturally attuned to doing whatever it takes to ensure the approval and love of our caregivers. But the problem arises when we’re adults living out of the same old pictures—particularly of how we should be—without awareness of what’s behind our need to help. Do we need to be seen as a helper? Do we need to feel and believe that we are, in fact, a helper? Do we need to see people as benefiting from our “help”? Or do we serve in order to be seen as a worthy person? Are we helping out of a sense of “should”? Can we see how attached we are to our “self,” our self-image, our identity? Who would we be without it? What hole are we trying to fill with it? How are we trying to avoid the groundlessness of insecurity?

When our cover identity starts breaking down because the hole isn’t being filled—for example, when we don’t get the recognition that we wanted or the results that we hoped for—we’ll probably react emotionally, with some form of disappointment or anxiety. Yet, this very reaction is an infallible practice reminder that we’re still attached in some way. We’ve gone from being a helper to experiencing that core hole of helplessness. But this hole of helplessness is where we must reside and practice in order to become free.

Most of our life is spent living out of behavioral strategies meant to cover or avoid our pain—the deep sense of basic alienation that takes the form of feeling worthless, hopeless, or fundamentally flawed in some way. When our strategy is to help, when we need to be helpful, this requires that we need to find people who seem helpless, or situations that seem to require help. It’s true that we may also have a genuine desire to help—one that isn’t based on our needs—but whenever we feel an urgency or longing to help, it’s often rooted in our fears of facing our own unhealed pain. If our basic fear is that we’ll always be alone, what better way to avoid it than to find someone who needs us? If we have an underlying feeling of worthlessness, how better to prove that we’re worthy than by doing good deeds? If we’re trying to avoid the feeling of being fundamentally powerless or ineffectual, doesn’t it make sense to take on the identity of someone who can affect people and outcomes positively through service?

The “helper” syndrome I’m describing is at least not outwardly harmful. The main issue is that it can keep us blind to what is really going on. It’s easy to see how this lack of awareness, multiplied throughout our society, could lead to the social and political chaos that we live in. Failure to work with our inner turmoil—our need for power, our self-centered desires to possess, our fear-based greed and need to control—results in hatred, aggression, and intolerance. This is the source of all conflicts and wars. Without inner understanding, individuals as well as societies will continue to flounder. This is why it is so important for each of us to come back again and again to the practice of awareness.

We first must see clearly how we’re using our identity to live a life based primarily on finding some measure of comfort and security. But we also have to experience the hole out of which this drive arises. The more we can learn to reside in this hole, the more we connect with our innate compassion. Interestingly, this experience may not manifest as what we conventionally consider compassion. Compassion doesn’t have to look like doing good. There is one story of a seeker who, upon clearly seeing the truth—where he was no longer defined and confined by his self-images—became a cab driver. Simply by his being, with his own presence, he was able to give himself to others, like a white bird in the snow. There was nothing special about his situation.

The question is: Where in our life do we do good, at least in part to subtly solidify the self? Where do we get in our own way? Where do we use even our identity as a spiritual seeker, or the comfort of seeing ourselves on the path or as part of something bigger, to cover that anxious quiver of being?

In a way, we all keep waking up to the same repeating day, living our hazy notion of life—often clouded by our unending confusion and anxiety. Simply doing good deeds, or even being a devoted meditator, won’t mean anything without the painful honesty that’s required to look at what we’re doing. We must take our heads out of the ground and look at all the ways we get in our own way—-fooling ourselves and obstructing the possibility of living a more open and genuine life.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/groundhog-day/feed/0Bayda, Ezra Shinkokuhttp://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-bio/
http://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-bio/#commentsSat, 26 Dec 2009 04:45:26 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=2292Ezra Bayda (born 1944) is a member of the White Plum Asanga and has been practicing meditation since 1970. He originally trained in the Gurdjieff tradition, living in a community led by Robert De Ropp. He began formal Zen practice in 1978, studying first with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and then later with Jakusho Kwong Roshi. ...

]]>Ezra Bayda (born 1944) is a member of the White Plum Asanga and has been practicing meditation since 1970. He originally trained in the Gurdjieff tradition, living in a community led by Robert De Ropp. He began formal Zen practice in 1978, studying first with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and then later with Jakusho Kwong Roshi. In 1992 he began working with Charlotte Joko Beck, and began teaching in 1995, receiving dharma transmission in 1998.

Ezra Bayda’s teachings are a blend of the Zen and Gurdjieff traditions, and are also influenced by Stephen Levine and Pema Chodron, with their emphasis on the need for loving kindness as an essential part of practice. Ezra has been a hospice volunteer for over ten years, and has authored five books, including Being Zen and Zen Heart.

]]>http://sweepingzen.com/ezra-bayda-bio/feed/0Barry Magid Interviewhttp://sweepingzen.com/barry-magid-interview-2/
http://sweepingzen.com/barry-magid-interview-2/#commentsFri, 25 Dec 2009 16:33:52 +0000http://sweepingzen.com/?p=1763Conducted by email on June 4, 2009 Barry Magid is a Zen teacher in the Ordinary Mind School of Zen and a Dharma heir of Charlotte Joko Beck. A trained psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, Barry is a widely-published author with particular interest in integrating psychodynamic psychoanalysis with Zen. I would like to thank Barry for taking ...

Barry Magid is a Zen teacher in the Ordinary Mind School of Zen and a Dharma heir of Charlotte Joko Beck. A trained psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, Barry is a widely-published author with particular interest in integrating psychodynamic psychoanalysis with Zen. I would like to thank Barry for taking the time to answer my questions.

SZ: What was your initial draw to Zen practice and when did you begin studies?

BM: I came to NYC in 1975 after medical school to begin my training in psychiatry. Shortly afterwards I started going to analysis three times a week and to The NY Zen Studies Society three days a week as well. So I got the two practices pretty well mixed up from the start. Each was a discipline of attention and self-exploration. Each offered some window into my mind as it was and how I hoped it could be. Early on I was fascinated by how two such different practices could bring about profound character change by means the other could not recognize or understand. Where in Zen was the insight into childhood trauma and family conflict that psychoanalysis thought was so necessary for change? Where in psychoanalysis was there any equivalent to “enlightenment?”

BM: Both involve sitting still and attending to the mind/body as it is, as it manifests moment after moment – and how uncomfortable we are with this mind and body – how preoccupied we are with escaping it, transforming it, transcending it. Both keep bringing us back to what we want to avoid, which is our vulnerability and transience. Each leads us to a peace that comes from staying with and accepting the very parts of ourselves we came to escape.

SZ: That is very interesting. I’d say that psychoanalysis and Zen seem to be at odds in terms of time-orientation. That is to say, psychoanalysis is typically understood to be an exploration of unconscious urges and issues we’ve not really resolved. Zen, on the other hand, seems very much a practice grounded in the immediacy of things here-and-now. Perhaps I am missing something. Would you care to comment on that assertion?

BM: That’s an interesting way to frame the contrast. Zen, which in one sense is about “being-just-this-moment” is also about repetition, about the day-in day-out nature of practice. It is about just showing up for sitting after sitting, day after day, year after year. Don’t minimize the “Groundhog Day” side of practice! In time, in repetition, patterns of expectation emerge, in regard to the practice itself, to other students, to the teacher. In other words, behind the scenes, transference emerges and has to be worked through (or ignored, with all its consequences) in Zen practice. Traditionally, this was a matter of “wearing down” emotional reactions – of the “self” itself. But I think practice can also provide a container for everything we bring to it – that we can learn our sitting, our life is big enough to contain everything we think and feel, that we can say “yes’ to it all and feel acceptance and joy about life as it is. The psychoanalytic relationship provides a different kind of container within which to say “yes” to parts of ourselves we deny or split off.

SZ: What are some of the characteristics of the Ordinary Mind School of which you are affiliated? For instance, I notice that a hierarchy of teachers is not something the school is interested in.

BM: Joko Beck’s contribution was to make our emotional life, our emotional reactions, tensions and feelings not obstacles to practice but the focus of practice.

Pain, anger, hurt, bodily tension were all IT – all perfect manifestations of the moment, to be experienced fully in and for themselves – not as something to be gotten through on the way to peace and calm and clarity. They are our life and zazen is a way to experience it rather than try to escape it.

Joko trained with Maezumi Roshi using his traditional koan curriculum. She evidently felt this did not engage her own emotional difficulties (or his for that matter, given his history of alcoholism and misconduct) and developed a technique of labeling thoughts and an awareness of body tensions, which she saw as a physical correlate of bottled up emotional conflict. Ordinary Mind is a very loosely connected group of her Dharma heirs, who (as Wittgenstein might have put it) share a family resemblance without necessarily all having any single thing in common. My own personal development has taken me more in the direction of Soto Zen and “just sitting” – leaving everything just as it is.

SZ: You mentioned Taizan Maezumi’s struggle with alcoholism and conduct, which brings up a loaded issue commonly talked about when discussing Zen teachers in the United States. Do you believe such things automatically disqualify an individual as a Zen teacher and, moreover, what is your view on the ethics of teaching?

BM: There’s no “automatically” or absolute standards in such matters. First of all, we have to get over the idea of enlightenment as an all or nothing, you got it or you don’t affair. Teachers can be wise in some areas, foolish in others. Some students will be very vulnerable to a particular teachers’ failings, while others remain resilient and able to learn what there is to learn from an imperfect teacher. I’ve seen students who have been just as damaged by emotionally withholding teachers as by overtly abusive ones. There are teachers who are financial, not sexual predators. There are teachers who admit their mistakes and thereby help their students acknowledge their own problems with self-acceptance rather than self-loathing. But teachers like doctors should “First, do no harm.” Students, like patients, must be presumed to be in a vulnerable state and deserve not to be put in the service of the teacher’s self-centered needs. But we must remember that many teachers have probably gone astray precisely because their own training and their own students’ expectations did not allow them to be human beings with emotional and sexual needs of their own.

BM: She’s an old lady. She is still teaching and some of her students feel there’s continuity with her earlier teachings; others feel she has changed significantly from the teacher of Everyday Zen and Nothing Special. Personally, I feel that the teacher who attempted to withdraw dharma transmission from two of her longest and most devoted students, Elizabeth Hamilton and Ezra Bayda, is not the same teacher I studied with.

SZ: That is something I’d read about previously and puzzled over, as I’ve not recalled hearing of any other masters “revoking” Dharma transmission from students.

BM: I’m no expert on Buddhist canon law, but having sat in on a number of discussions of this issue with members of the American Zen Teachers Association, there seemed to be a consensus among the teachers I’ve talked to that Dharma Transmission cannot be revoked.

It is up to the members of the particular sangha to decide whether such an attempt reflects more on qualifications of the heirs or the judgment of the teacher. Some discussions put the question in the context of aging teachers whose judgment is failing or who are unwilling to retire and relinquish authority. It is no simple matter, like dealing with aging parents who suddenly want to disown the kids…..If there is clear misconduct it should be evident to the sangha as well and they can deal with it as they see fit.

SZ: In closing, what are some books you would recommend those interested in Zen read?